Date: Thu 02-Jan-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: CAROLL

Quick Words:

Long-Wharf-Stern-Mystery-Daly

Full Text:

(rev "Mystery School" @Long Wharf)

Theatre Review--

This Time, Daly Plays Everything But A Detective

(with cut)

By Julie Stern

NEW HAVEN -- For those who automatically associate actress Tyne Daly with NYPD

detective Mary Beth Lacey, from the actress' long-running CBS television drama

"Cagney & Lacey, " the title of Long Wharf's latest production, Mystery School

, might suggest a thriller set in an institution. In fact, the word mystery is

used in its religious sense: "the peace that passes understanding; or, that

mystical, non-rational aspect of experience that comes under the broad heading

of `spirituality.'"

Paul Selig's short, fascinating and very accessible work is a series of

dramatic monologues portraying five drastically different women linked only by

their hunger for a meaningful spiritual life that transcends the limitations

of their worldly situations.

By turns scary, touching, comic and inspiring, the play is a tour de force for

Daly, who uses minimal props and a single costume to create a remarkable range

of characters.

There is a smugly self-righteous Christian fundamentalist who divides her

thoughts between cataloging the sexual transgressions of her neighbors, and

fantasizing the coming of Armageddon.

An alcoholic lesbian struggles to take the second step at her AA meeting,

seeing sobriety as emptiness because her former lover has replaced their

relationship with the love of God.

The loopy host of a New Age call-in show on cable access TV alternates

dispensing her cheerful messages on the proper use of channeling crystals and

the ultimate benignity of the universe with snappy advice to

Lester-the-Heavy-Breather, who persists in tying up her phone lines.

The recently widowed wife of an eminent archaeologist goes through the motions

of a weekly slide show of her husband's various finds, droning on about the

details of their provenance, all the while haunted by the pain and finality of

her loss.

And an exuberant eccentric, Dr Edie, who delivers a commencement speech which

begins with her account of being kicked out of the American Psychiatric

Convention for defending the right to hear voices but which turns into an

idealistic and powerful celebration of the teaching profession.

Except perhaps for the last piece in the set, the portraits are ironic. The

characters and their respective "searches" are deeply flawed. What they are

looking for lies beyond them, or right next to them, or in some other

direction, but they don't see it.

It is the playwright's success that the audience can see, and recognize,

profundity in the midst of banality.